Center leaps to new dance facility

Dancing days are here again

Posted: Friday, March 14, 2003

By Janis Reidjreid@onlineathens.com

Six-year-old Cherish Gresham rehearses with her class during a recent session at the East Athens Dance Center in Dudley Park. Athens-Clarke County commissioners could vote next month on a proposal to move the center to the Miriam Moore Community Center on McKinley Drive.File

After more than 15 years in a cramped facility in Dudley Park, the East Athens Dance Center is headed for a new building large enough to let its dancers soar.

A proposal to build a new 15,000-square-foot dance center on property at the Miriam Moore Community Center on McKinley Drive was reviewed by Athens-Clarke County commissioners at their Tuesday work session.

An item approving the building's location and directing staff to move forward with the design will be up for vote at the commission's April 1 regular voting meeting.

The future location of the dance center, once destined for a future East Athens Community Park in the Trail Creek Street area, has been under debate since August as Athens-Clarke County commissioners consider an alternate location.

The East Athens park project was delayed until last month when Athens-Clarke County lost an appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court in a land value dispute and was ordered to pay $2.9 million for the property.

The relocation of the dance program - currently housed in a 1,000-square-foot building in Dudley Park - to the Miriam Moore Community Center will be a small victory for members of the dance center's parent group, Parent Reinforcement In Dance Education (P.R.I.D.E.).

P.R.I.D.E. members have lobbied for some months against the initial plans to place the center in East Athens Park. The parents said the East Athens Park site would have been an inconvenient and isolated location.

Parents favored the Miriam Moore Community Center, which houses a community center building and a community health center as well as recreational facilities including baseball fields and tennis and basketball courts, and serves as a gathering place for East Athens residents.

Dance center founder Lois Thomas-Wright said Thursday the program began in the Miriam Moore Community Center building and it was and will be the most accessible location for the students in the program.

The commission reviewed three site options for the dance center, all located on the Miriam Moore center property. Two potential sites were located adjacent to the center in the northern corner of the property, one on the east of the building and the other on the west.

The third location, which will be recommended to the commission by the county manager and P.R.I.D.E. members, would be located on the east side of the neighborhood health center in the southern portion of the property.

Thomas-Wright said the location near the health center was embraced by P.R.I.D.E. because it was the only option that didn't require the displacement of any of the other Miriam Moore facilities.

''It gives us our own individual space as well as being part of the beauty and growth of the center,'' she said.

The dance center, founded in 1987, is funded and operated through the Athens-Clarke County Leisure Services Department. A quarterly fee if $12 is charged and the program is open to young people from 5 to 17 years of age.

The dance program was created to serve low-income families who may not be able to afford dance classes at other institutions. While low-income families are given preference, families of all income levels are placed on a waiting list for up to three years in order to participate.

The program, which now has more than 100 children enrolled, has a reputation for discipline and excellence.